Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Coming up on episode 214 of wheel bearings, we take a look at the 2021 Shelby GT 500 the Toyota Highlander hybrid, the BMW i x ride in the new Mercedes Benz SL update on Tesla charge connector pricing, GM new ultra phi platform production of bright drop bV 600 and a big investment from Ford in Eevee production all coming up next. This is Episode 214 wheel bearings. I'm Sam obul salmon from guidehouse insights and I Roberto Baldwin 0:40 am Roberto Baldwin from Engadget Sam Abuelsamid 0:44 and we're not quite sure where Nicole is at the moment hopefully she'll be joining us in progress. But let's begin. Robbie, what have you been driving Roberto Baldwin 0:53 so I have been driving some secret cars I go these well actually drove one and I just sat another while someone else drove it but a few weeks ago I was in what is that country Germany driving the BMW i x electric SUV This is there sort of you know this is their fifth generation Evie system and I actually drove two vehicles I drove the i x di for I can't say anything about the iPhone yet but I can tell you about the i x i can tell you that as a very, very very large kidney grille and it doesn't need to have that because that does not have a radiator it does have air intakes towards the bottom of the vehicle to help cool the battery but you don't need the giant kidney grille but you know what it's it's BMW it's part of their brand and I have to just talk about the kidney grille every time we talk about BMW now fine it's fine it's fine it looks okay fine. Just you're just gonna Sam Abuelsamid 1:57 walk behind all the time just don't walk up to it from the front and you'll be fine Roberto Baldwin 2:01 yeah, either you're going to absolutely hate it and hate it so much you're not going to want anything to do with this vehicle or you're going to accept what it is and be like fine or you're going to be like you know what i like it and so for people for two and three for groups two and three it is a splendid SUV is a splendid electric SUV I drove it around Germany they had us driving on some back roads is driving on the Autobahn as drive you know here they're everywhere and it did wonderfully It is about the same size as the x five it's a little bit shorter height wise but you know everything else is about the same so if you're looking at an X five and you're thinking gosh I wish I could get one of these as an Eevee there well you can and that's the eye x it is again I really really liked it I was surprised how much they like I surprised how well BMWs Evie system has evolved as we drove the i three I like the eye three just for for its quirkiness it was just this way it's like you someone made a concept car and then instead of changing anything they just like put it into mass production and throw it on the road that that was the i three I loved I loved that idea about and I know a lot of people are just like Sam Abuelsamid 3:14 why you know I think I think once you drive an i three you know a lot of things about the form factor that may have turned you off actually fall away because I suspect the same is true the i x you know the the i three is actually great to drive Roberto Baldwin 3:31 yeah it's it's a fun little machine to drive I wouldn't like recommend going on like long road trips it is a small vehicle you got a short wheelbase that means every you know freeway bump is going to feel a bit terrifying if you're not used to driving a small car and I'm just gonna say most Americans are not used to driving small cars anymore because none of our cars not even the small ones are actually small Sam Abuelsamid 3:53 yeah but Roberto Baldwin 3:54 yeah the you know the the the i x it is as all drives dual motor as 516 horsepower 540 I'm sorry 564 pound feet of torque so you're getting a ton of power for your money and they haven't they don't have an EPA rating yet but they're targeting about 300 miles which should be fine for 99% of y'all if you're looking for an Eevee it's charges add what is its charge rate? I'm sorry, I 195 kilowatts, so up to 195 kilowatts add. Yeah, so if you if you're able to find a charging station, DC fast charging station that'll support 195 or more electrify America has three to have has ones that do 350 Yeah, you can just you can charge this thing you know, as quickly as you want. Well, you know, not 350 but you can do at 195, which is pretty quick, and it's nothing to sneeze at. It drives well A lot of body roll the steering feels the steering a little bit reminds me the I ate the I ate the steering felt a little video game ish I think if you don't have a lot of you don't have I think it was much worse than this this regard where he didn't have it was fun to drive but it also is disconnected you feel disconnected from the road you don't feel you don't have a lot of feedback at the the i x also has also suffered from that not as bad as the Ice Age, but you do sort of feel a little bit disconnected. I think for most people that is something they'll probably never notice people were just kind of driving around town if you're more of a driving enthusiast you probably you you definitely will notice that you know and that's something that sort of creeped into a lot a lot more of the vehicles on the road especially with the drive by wire systems where you know it's electronically controlled as opposed to you know a mechanical directly stuck to it you know, it all comes down to just sort of adjusting some some algorithms I suppose in order to to recreate the feeling of as you're turning sharper or as you're you get some sort of feedback from the road so the i x does have a little bit less feedback than I would like from from a BMW especially you know especially from BMW it's company that really wants everyone to think hey, we're making drivers cars so as a drivers car you have that but stomp on the gas and stomp on the accelerator and it takes off you know flying down the article saying that i i every once in a while I would say every third article I have to go back and remove the word gas and put in the word accelerator yeah check out driving on the Autobahn doing 190 kilometers a lot of speed so you say 60 to about 100 miles an hour so yeah just cruise along 100 miles an hour comfortable calm collected just it's it's it is it is a vehicle in a lot I think a lot of us kind of have this this tendency where you are driving faster you're traveling quicker or faster than you think you are you're like oh I must be doing 16 you look down you're doing 80 just because everything's a bit more smooth because you don't have you know engine noise you don't have any vibration you don't have any of that stuff so with the IQ you definitely ended up with that sort of oh dear I need to slow down before I get pulled over by the the German police and they start talking to me in German I'm like I don't know I'm a dumb American overall no it's it is a great SUV. The starting price is sorry even look at my notes. There we go at $3,200 it expected in the US probably around March 2020 to 2022 they said first quarter but I heard march from someone at BMW so march april you can probably pick one up if you're looking for one if you want a giant grill in your front yard it is yeah I was you know a lot of sometimes you get into these TVs that the traditional automakers are making and you feel like we're like well they're this is this is good this is good this is fine you know they've they've they've done this they've done the thing but I think we know what the Mercedes with the with the new BMW you're getting into and you're like oh my god these are outstanding these are outstanding ease from these luxury brands are really working to make sure that they're sort of transitioning their driving experience from their ice vehicles their internal combustion engine vehicles into an Eevee experience and in some cases it's better I still think the US is better than the S Class right now. That just for for the sake of luxury again it's like we were talking about no vibration no noise it's just like this smooth amazing feeling as you're driving I actually think access is gonna is better than the x five just for that because you know when you're getting an SUV you're not buying an M car you're buying an SUV you want to be able to have the nice luxury and the drivers feeling of a BMW. And I say yeah, aside from that, the you know, while the front grille which again, if two thirds of you will be fine with and the the sort of not a lot of feedback. I'm I'm a big fan. I was surprised. I was pleasantly surprised and I've been pleasantly surprised from a lot of these vehicles come out. I mean, the Ford Mustang machi. pleasantly surprised. The EQ s and you know, incredibly surprised and the same with the ix. Sam Abuelsamid 9:37 Have they did they say anything about any plans for other variants, you know, lower power variant, you know, with maybe a single motor rear drive version, or can we expect any of that to be coming over the next year or Roberto Baldwin 9:52 two. I don't think they're going to have the lower power version in the US. There's an N 40 Which we did not drive and I think the the I'm sorry I 40 I'm sorry I strike 40 i don't think i think when they look at the the what's going on in the United States when it comes to what people want a low a smaller battery is that it's just not going to work out here I think it's the same thing like when mini had the mini one when the mini first came out they had this very low essentially low power mini like the cheapest mini you could get in Europe which they didn't bring it to the US because in the US they just like if this isn't going to sell because the United States wants power they know the United States we want power we want range and if you have you know if you have a version of a vehicle officially now or people are still concerned about range of a version of eagle and less range, it's it's it's highly unlikely it'll it'll be here asked for an M version I don't see why they wouldn't do that. I mean, I think an M version of of everything, I mean, the the I four I drove was an M version. And that's all I can say. Sam Abuelsamid 11:10 Well, you know, given that M versions usually have even higher margins, it would be very unusual for BMW not to offer an M version of the ix Oh, gotcha. So so you know, it's I think it's an interesting vehicle. You know, one of the things that they've talked about what the is that it'll be their first vehicle they offer that has 5g conductivity in it, did they did they talk at all about that? Roberto Baldwin 11:40 They did a bit Um, I think the the issue with 5g is that the rollout is still happening and so you still have this like weird like people and you can get an 5g phone you can get a car with 5g You know, there's all these capabilities that are coming but the rollout is a little you know, lackluster it just takes a while for and you know, like places like companies like at&t are trying to you know, they want to hurry up and kill 3g so they can repurpose those towers for 5g so you know, those you know, you have companies that are sort of like waiting in order to kill their 3g systems so they can throw 5g and once they throw those up, and you know, the the network increases? Yeah, I think it's you know, it's it's, it's a it's important technology, and 5g, especially when it comes to automobiles, basically, we're talking about the amount of data that's going to be shared from the vehicle to the cloud, and you know, and back and forth, and then we have, you know, vehicle to infrastructure and vehicle to vehicle and all that, but there's so much infrastructure has to be built around all that to make it work where it's just having the car with 5g is is I mean, it's great because it kind of future proofs it well, as much as you can feature Bruce, a phone network, and you know, everyone knows a 3g phone right now. It's like, Oh, crap. Sam Abuelsamid 12:58 I know. Yeah, there are times when when the 5g even though my phone is showing 5g connection on there. I just can't actually connect anything. And so I'll just go into the network settings and just say, just use Lt. Just use 4g don't even bother trying to use the 5g and all of a sudden everything works, you know, so yeah, jeez, way overrated? Roberto Baldwin 13:23 It is it is. And it's, you know, it's it's one of those things where like, well, eventually, well eventually and so we're just sort of waiting for these eventuality when 5g is actually a network that is reliable and widespread. And right now that's not really yet but you know, we'll see how it works with our network. This this this year, I mean, it's, it's, these automakers need to sort of look at you know, they gotta look 10 you know, 15 years into the future for their cars as opposed to your phone, which they're just waiting like, I don't know, three years four years for a phone that's uh, you know, if it's Apple and Google had their way we did be every year. Sam Abuelsamid 14:03 And you know, we've got something to talk about later that touches on the building in the hardware that you may or may not actually be using today, but will potentially be used at some point in the future. So we'll get to that a little later on. But in the meantime, what other vehicle did you experience? Roberto Baldwin 14:25 So I got to sit in the new Mercedes SL and if you know if you are a if you're not, even if you're not a car, fan, a fan I are car enthusiasts. Everyone's number one car that they love is the Gullwing their Mercedes SL the goldwing so it's the official Yeah, it's sort of the official car that everyone loves. And so it's this is the SL roadster. It's coming soon. They didn't show me that. To share any specs they didn't tell me you know it I do know it's all wheel dry Sam Abuelsamid 15:06 currently, Roberto Baldwin 15:07 right? Yeah the current ones are not so it's all wheel drive and it looks a bit like the current but I know that they're working to make it lighter you know they've loved one of the things was make it lighter, make it more nimble, lighter and nimble and from the passenger seats it's always weird to like sort of talk about a car when you sit in the passenger seat because you can sort of experience what's going on but not directly because your input isn't driving the experience your experience is based on someone else doing things to try to impress you It's like when your friend you get in the car with your friend or like look this Carl do zero 60 in this much time and so yeah it's it's it was a it was a fun drive i think it's it's going to do well but I yeah there wasn't a lot of information shared it was interesting to talk to talk to them though because they you know that that look that car was one of 30 vehicles and you know 30 like the three or four of the bunch of different models that Mercedes brings over and they drive it all around the United States they you know they they drive in up and up north they drive San Francisco drive to the desert they drive in you know I was in Colorado and in Denver and they bring these vehicles over in order to test them on the roads and Testament ends in these extreme environments, test them in very high altitudes test them with our fuel which apparently is not as good as European fuel and bring me Yeah, so they they bring these cars over to test them so they can make sure that the everything that you know they've researched and everything everything they worked on is real it actually passes the tests and so that was that was sort of interesting because they talked about we talked about how every time they learn something they send it back to Germany and the Germany's like okay and then they if they have to make a change that makes a global change and it gets sent to all the vehicles in that in you know that model all the vehicles have that model they're being tested and so it goes out and then they drive around and then you all we got to make a change and here's the big computer in the back and so it's very interesting to sort of ride along in a vehicle that hasn't actually been unveiled yet it was camouflage in the front in the back so you can see the profile and then had like you know, but for the most part it sort of looks like the you know the the current SL and it was a it still has that Mercedes feel more you have to be able to create a vehicle that if you're trying to create a performance vehicle for Mercedes you still have to make sure that that vehicle feels like has that Mercedes luxury ride and so you know he put in comfort mode and he was very you know placid and very you know for for a vehicle that small and then you know he puts it in sport mode it feels very very grumbly and ready to party you know businesses private party in the back Sam Abuelsamid 18:18 and then they've got actually I think on the last generation they went back to the soft top right that so they got rid of the retractable hardtop went back to a soft top like they they're retaining that for this one Roberto Baldwin 18:31 they have a retractable roof so it'll g I will say though that the retractable roof because it's a pre production car once they pulled it down sometimes they had problems getting it back up so I was the first there was you know five journalists there and I was the first and I my my my drive was I had the roof up on my drive just because we had to go through like some dusty areas and we spent a lot of time stuck in traffic before we hit the mountains. So yeah, and it's Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 19:09 And then didn't talk at all about power trains and a swamp No, Roberto Baldwin 19:13 they're not they're not they haven't shared anything yet. Okay, it's Yeah, it's it's it's very much what's under it is probably a VA it's probably you know, four liter VA. But they you know, that's a that's just an educated guess. Sam Abuelsamid 19:28 I guess they'll probably have the four liter twin turbo V Yeah, the three liter inline six. Yeah, both with the 48 volt mild hybrid system. Roberto Baldwin 19:37 Exactly. Yeah, that's what you know, the usual Mercedes setup. Yeah, but you know, it's it's always sort of fun to sort of, to to to ride in something that you're not supposed to know about. Even if you don't get to drive it, which you know, I'm like, okay, you know, you bag and you plead. You're like, come on. Come on. Come on right now. We're not gonna let you drive our million dollar car. Which by the way all those pre production cars are very expensive. And so whenever I have a chance occasionally I'll get a chance to drive with pre production car and you're just like oh, I hope I don't break this it's like driving a very old car. Like something from the museum like both of those situations are like super excited, especially for the older vehicles but also super anxious because at least with the pre production cars and like well we got parts we can just throw it on here it's gonna be a pain in the ass but fine, it's with the with the classic stuff, you know, they can sort of rebuild the part in their in their works in but you don't want them to. definitely do not want to so Sam Abuelsamid 20:45 yeah, yeah. I mean, from from my, you know, from my engineering days, you know, for 17 years, I got used to driving stuff that was not even yet pre production, you know, is like sometimes very early prototypes or even mules. And so I was used to things breaking unexpectedly, in in very weird ways. Sometimes. Roberto Baldwin 21:08 I've been in pre production cars that that just shut down on the freeway, like well, mule, I've been an animal that you're right, you're riding alongside just turns off, you're like, Okay, just pull over and restart. Sam Abuelsamid 21:22 Back in, like 2007 One of the last things I worked on as an engineer was the brake system for what was supposed to be the two mode hybrid Saturn view, which was, you know, their compact crossover. And they were putting they had, they already had a mild hybrid system in there, and they were going to put in a strong hybrid. And there were some issues and that car never actually made it to production and get the whole program got canceled when GM went bankrupt and everything, but that when I was driving around the Milford Proving Grounds doing testing with that, and working on calibrating the software and tweaking the software, from time to time, when I would, I would do a stop, you know, with the brakes, I would pull over to the side to take a look at some data and for tweaking something else and moving on every once in a while after I pull over it just wouldn't start again. It was Yeah, go out and you know, pull the big fuse out of the battery and, you know, wait a minute, you know, basically do a hard try to do a hard reset, plug it back in, you know, hope it would start Nope. And so there were a couple of occasions where I actually had to call back to the garage and have somebody come up with a push truck and push me back from the track back to the garage. Take a look at what was going on with the thing. I mean you know that that happens in development you know, you've got stuff that's not you know, stuff that's been hacked together and all kinds of weird things happen. Roberto Baldwin 23:00 So while we're building these, we're just gonna cram this piece from another car in here and hope for the best. Sam Abuelsamid 23:06 Pretty Pretty much yeah. Yeah, we won't talk about the battery fires. Alright, since we last spoke, I also had a couple of different vehicles. I had the Shelby Ford Shelby GT 500 Mustang which is currently the the top of the line fastest Mustang you can get and actually guess certainly the most powerful production Mustang to date. Fastest accelerating one to date. The version I had was largely a base version yet had to they he didn't you know, only a couple options on it the heated and cooled seats. The the racing stripes had the vinyl over the top stripes, which is interesting on the GT 500 you can get stripes two different ways you can get the vinyl stripes, which are $375. Or you can opt for the painted stripes where they actually you know, take the body comes out of the out of the paint shop partway through the process, they mask it by hand, spray the The White Stripes over the entire length of the body and then bake it and then put it back into the paint shop again for the for the clear coat. So the clear coat is actually on top of the stripes. And you can tell when if you go to it if you see a GT 500 and you see the stripes that actually extend all the way to the edge of the hood, you know, on the on the drill rather than stopping just shy of that and if you run your hand over it, you won't feel the stripes on the painted ones. You'll feel the vinyl stripes because they're on top of the clear coat. The paint is stripes if you want that option $10,000 as opposed to 375 bucks for the vinyl. Roberto Baldwin 25:06 I mean it sounds cool though that's a Sam Abuelsamid 25:11 that's a hell of a lot of money for a very subtle difference. But the GT 500 has the 5.2 liter V eight with a super big honkin supercharger on it. 760 horsepower. So this is essentially Ford's answer to the Hellcat. This is currently the fastest accelerating Mustang, you can get it loser to 60 in about three and a half seconds. Next week, I'll actually be driving another vehicle that has a pony badge on it. That will accelerate to 60 miles an hour and roughly the same amount of time. But does it with zero emissions and no noise. And that's the Maki chatty but the the GT 500 it makes a lot of noise. It's very loud and especially if you don't if you started up and it's not in quiet mode. Because a couple years ago Ford on the Mustang introduced something they call quiet different exhaust mode since it opens and closes different valves in the exhaust system. And you can get a quiet mode which say also nicknamed the good neighbor mode. And when I got up to go to a meeting last Wednesday, and that fired up the car. My wife was in the bedroom at the opposite end of the house and she knew she as soon as she saw that fire they hit the start button. She knows running because it was this sucker is loud. And it's it is quick too and it's runs out it rolls on Michelin Pilot Sport cup, two tires, which you would think by looking at them, you know, they look nearly like slicks it they don't look like tires that would do well in anything but dry weather conditions, you know, but they it had been raining that morning. And I had to go to a meeting. And they did surprisingly well. I was I was shocked at you know how much traction actually had. Now granted, I did you know I was very gentle with the accelerator pedal didn't didn't do anything foolish with it. You know, I wanted to make sure that, you know I got there in one piece. But I didn't notice at one point, I was driving up telegraph road to Pontiac that when I went to change lanes, as I crossed over the the white lane lines on the pavement, I could feel the card squiggle a little bit just as the tires traverse those those white stripes, because there was less traction there. And I could feel it kind of moving around underneath me. So I knew I knew at that point, it's like yeah, I definitely better be very careful with this thing. It's a lot of fun to drive. You know, it's, I'd say it's a lot more fun to drive than previous gt five hundreds. In the past, you know, the GT 500 was very much really just a drag strip car, it was great in a straight line. But they never handled very well because they tend they're they're more nose heavy than any other Mustang because that engine with the blower on there and everything. It's got a lot more front weight bias. And they were generally not great handling cars. But this current generation, I mean, it's really been transformed. And certainly being on the S 550 platform helps a lot you get independent rear suspension, but they also come standard with things like magneride dampers, and you know, really good wheels and tires. Big, big, big brakes. I drove it back in late 2019 when they did the launch program at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and it was really impressive on the track there. It's you know, it's not quite as good as a GT 350 on the track. But it's also got 200 plus more power more horsepower than the GT 350 unfortunately you can't get a manual transmission with the GT 500 it's only comes with a seven speed DCT now but you know if you want something with this much power, and that's pretty much the way it's gonna be from almost everybody now it's it's increasingly difficult to get really high powered cars with manual transmissions anymore. Roberto Baldwin 29:29 I just feel like a lot of people would just be melting clutches like they just have a lot of people came back a week later with just the clutch melting from the, from the transitional housing just yeah, from the bellhousing just like Well, there you go. That's why we don't give you manual transmissions to handle them. Yeah. So I can't have nice things. Sam Abuelsamid 29:52 Yeah. So you know the the the tremec seven speed DCT on this thing works great. No complaint. There, the the base price on the GT 500 is $70,300. With the options that I had on here, including the Technology Package, which comes which includes the the 12 speaker b&o sound system, all told it came to $78,470 including the delivery charge. If you want a really fast, really loud Mustang, this one will definitely do the trick. Will whether it's worth you know, another 2025 grand over a mock one. No, I'm not I'm not sure it is. But but it is. It's it's great at being what it is. And, and it's also quite thirsty. Over the the time I had it, it averaged about 15 miles per gallon. Which, which is why also that that that 66 six or almost $7,000 worth of options slash other on top of the base price includes a 20 $600 gas guzzler tax. So yeah, so it is it does have a thirst for fuel. But it'll it'll get you to the next gas station very, very quickly. Roberto Baldwin 31:22 Yeah, no, I was at that last that Las Vegas launch as well. And it was it was surprised it was surprisingly well mannered on the track. I was surprised at how well and you know that, you know, the independent suspension once they went to that you're like, Okay, finally. And that was something I did, I would just I would just harp on Mustang owners for years for decades about that rear suspension. There was just like, it's trash rear suspension, the rear suspension is trash your young one single item Why? Why What year is this? And even my friends who had Mustangs with Shelby's are like, yeah, we know. But now I know that is a fun car to drive. It was very It is very loud. We got eaten you know, we have we got to do quarter mile runs in it in Vegas. And it was That was fun. And we haven't had an autocross setup or I guess it was like I don't know, across. But yeah, it is a big, loud, fun car. That is very, very expensive. I don't Yeah, I don't know what the funds worth 70 grand. Yeah, that's, that's between you and your that's between you and your finance seers? Sam Abuelsamid 32:31 Yeah. Speaking of our crosses, last Sunday, I went to an autocross with my daughter. She bought a toy at six last spring. And she wanted to try autocrossing asked if I go whether so sure. So we went to one put on by the Detroit region, SCCA on Sunday. And there was somebody there with a new GT 500. And that is definitely not the car you want to use for an autocross as good as good as it handles now. It's It's too big, too heavy and too powerful for her to auto cross on this course, that it's hard to say how much was the driver? How much was the car, but that particular car was consistently getting between was running about 51 to 53 seconds for a lap of that course. In my 1990 Miata with all the 116 horsepower, out around four to 6.6. So I was doing about five to six seconds faster. So it's definitely not an autocross course car. High speed. Yeah, no problem. But but definitely not. Or even on a big track, you know, take it to a proper track it but yeah, if you're if you're gonna go to an auto cross, leave the GT 500 at home, find a Miata or six or something or BRC? Those are those are really good for that. The other vehicle that I had was the Toyota Highlander hybrid, which I've previously driven earlier in the year. The the new Highlander, as I've said before, it's, it's not you know, I think it's it's an attractive vehicle, but I actually prefer the design of the previous generation Highlander. You know, this one's got kind of some long sweeping curves, you know, it's got the bulging rear fender that kind of echoes the look of the Supra, which I'm not entirely sure works on a big three row crossover like this, but it's not bad, but it's just it's not my cup of tea personally. Inside though it's vastly improved, much nicer than previous Islanders. Got a much better infotainment system that I'm really liking the new toy to infotainment. system much better than the old en tune works you know with CarPlay and Android Auto but even the the embedded stuff works reasonably well although the voice recognition stuff for navigation like if you want to use navigation or use voice recognition to input a destination, it's it's still pretty hit and miss not as bad as Volkswagen. But still pretty hit and miss. So if you want accurate voice record for your for your navigation, stick to your Siri or google assistant for that. But otherwise, you know, it's it's a lovely nail family crossover. You know, we'll hold seven people and with the hybrid system on on there, it's on this generation of the Highlander they went from the previous generation use a hybrid system with 3.5 liter V six. So the same setup that you'll find in the Lexus RX, this is the new one, they're using a 2.5 liter four cylinder so they want less performance more fuel economy and it it pays off you know if what you want is a really fuel efficient big SUV you know three row SUV. This is the beast for you. You know it's 243 horsepower combined between the the four cylinder and the electric motor. So you know for big vehicle like that, it's not slow but it's not. It's not as quick as you know what you'll get with the V six and I can tell you right or a palisade or an explorer but none of those vehicles are going to get you 37 miles per gallon. Which is what I got driving this thing around which is very impressive for such a large vehicle. So if you're if you're looking for a family hauler with with great fuel economy, this is the one for you and the one I had was all wheel drive. And it was the limited so you know it was loaded with all the goodies you know LED headlights and all it like all the current Toyota's It comes with a full suite of Driver Assist systems, the Toyota Safety Sense 2.5 Plus, with pre Collision Warning, pre collision system, pedestrian detection, adaptive cruise control lane centering the full full gamut of just about everything you can imagine. The Levin speaker JBL audio system, the eight inch yet sorry, larger touchscreens, 12.3 inch touch center touchscreen display. So it's very responsive got big touch targets, very easy to use. All told, this came to 47,100 No, wait, that's not right. 50 $50,363, including delivery. So just over 50 grand, which, you know, is not cheap. But by comparison with, you know, the competition, it's it's in the same ballpark as the as the competitors. So, you know, and the 37 miles per gallon that I saw is actually better than the EPA label fuel economy, which is only 35. So it's if you're, even though you're spending a fair bit amount of money on this thing, you're not going to spend a whole lot on fuel for it. So there's that. And that's it for the Highlander hybrid. Have you driven the Highlander Highlander? Um, Roberto Baldwin 38:41 I haven't driven the new one. I haven't driven anything with the new entune system. Okay, so it's it's Yeah, so it's, it's it is, I'm looking forward to it, because the old entune system is a pile of garbage. And it's I mean, it was and i think i think tuna knows that it was a pile of garbage. I think they understand that I know, for a few years, they were very reluctant to allow Apple and Google to attach to connect to their vehicles because they didn't want to give up that space to these third parties. And they finally sort of relented while they were working on their own system. And I think that's what a lot of automakers have done. They sort of relented and allowed these systems into their vehicles, because that's what customers want, as they work on their own systems as they work to sort of, you know, make their systems better. I mean, I find myself in Mercedes, like not really using CarPlay at all. But I'm using mbu x, I'm just yelling at the car the entire time. And so as these systems get better, and that's not to say mbu x is perfect, but it is better than most of what everyone else has on the market. So as these systems you know, as they advance and get better, people will probably sometimes they'll be like, Well, you know, Listening to music here, but I want to use this system because, you know, it works, especially if you have an Eevee. Right? Oh, it'll help me find a charging station. Whereas, you know, Apple Maps and Google Maps doesn't really take that into account, you know, when you when you're driving, you know, they're supposed to with the bolt, but I don't know if that's come out yet. But yeah, so I think there's there there is a sort of reluctance, and then allowing it and then hoping that they can catch up and hopefully surpass these systems at some point. Sam Abuelsamid 40:26 Yeah, and with this new entity that's in the, in the Highlander, it actually, if you're using CarPlay, or Android Auto, it splits the screen about one thirds, two thirds, or maybe a quarter or three quarters. So you get three quarters of the screen, for the smartphone projection display, and then the other quarter, keeps some of the embedded Toyota stuff in there. So you can swipe up and down through various things. So if you want to see the energy flow for the hybrid system, or, you know, see some of the other Toyota features in there, you can still see that in there, you can also swipe across and switch the position. So if you want the smartphone display on the on the right hand side and the Toyota stuff on the left, we can get a closer, you can have it that way, or you can just swipe and swap they swap places. So that's you know, there's quite a bit of flexibility built into it. And it's it's a fairly easy to use interface, you know, the, the icons are, are easy to you look at them easy to figure out what they are, and you know, what, what is, you know, what, what to tap to for whatever function you want. So, I would say it's a more attractive system and definitely much more functional. And if they can just get to a point where they're embedded voice recognition works better than, you know, then that might be less inclined to use the smartphone system. Roberto Baldwin 41:54 Yeah, a lot of company. I mean, you Volvo. And Volvo and Pollstar. They're going with Android Auto. So using the app, you know, using Google Assistant, and then there's big companies are going with with the with Alexa, you're using the Alexa sustained, essentially, you're just embedding that voice system into your, into your system. Sam Abuelsamid 42:13 So that's what this is doing. Roberto Baldwin 42:15 Yes, the lantis. And I think, I think, you know, that's, that's kind of smart. Because you're you're sort of, you know, you already have tier one suppliers, you're using boss, and all these other tier one suppliers for parts for your car. And I think there's there's portions of the infotainment system that if you can do it, if you don't have the resources to build a robust voice assistant, then maybe just use what other people have and just be, you know, partner with them and make it you know, if you can use their technology to make your system better than that, you know, thumbs up? Sam Abuelsamid 42:48 Absolutely. All right, let's discuss a few of the things that came up this week. First of all, I just want to touch base, had a couple of emails from people about a follow up on my comments on the last show about the price of the Tesla charge connector. And I misspoke, I was referencing a price that was from quite a few years ago. At one point they did in fact charge $3,000 for the charging cable. But it's now much cheaper, depending on which one you get. The higher power one I think is $520. Now, and there's a even cheaper one that is only $300 now, so are actually sorry, $275 for the gen two mobile connect your bundle. And so that gets you a cable and adapter an adapter to plug in to a 120 volt a standard 120 volt outlet. Or there's also a NEMA adapter included in the in the kit as well. It's funny that if you have a dryer outlet, Roberto Baldwin 43:57 it's funny as a NEMA adapter, but the maximum power output is still 1.3 kilowatts, which is just what you get from a 110. Yeah, well, Sam Abuelsamid 44:05 they that's the if you want the the higher power, the higher charging power that you have to pay. That's for the $520 cable. Yeah, that gets you the the, I think eight, seven or eight kilowatts. Roberto Baldwin 44:16 It's still way cheaper than my Hyundai one, which was again, like a lot for $1,000 a head oh my gosh, it's essentially sort of the same thing. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 44:29 So earlier this afternoon, you and I were both on a briefing call with GM, where they announced and this is part of, they're actually making a whole bunch of announcements this week in the early part of next week ahead of their investor day that they're doing next Wednesday, where they're going to be trying to convince Wall Street that hey, we are a modern tech company and we should be taken seriously and valued like a modern tech company not 100 plus year old odd maker. So today, they announced something called ultra phi. You want to try and explain what ultra phi is. Roberto Baldwin 45:10 So ultra phi is gmms up. Well, it's their plan to make their infotainment system and the systems and and a bunch of other other software that's in the vehicle. More like a smartphone more like something that they can upgrade over the air you get over the upgrades, whichever one is essentially either doing or plans on doing. But also they want to be able to sell you subscriptions for certain for certain features. So if you want to use super cruise, but you don't want to buy super cruise for an entire you don't want to go out and spend the you know so much money for super cruise and then pay the monthly fee every month for it, you only want to use it for maybe a road trip you're going to do well you could just rent essentially rent supers cruise for you know, a month or a week or whatever they haven't really, it's a lot, there's a lot of fuzzy and hazy what's going to happen with this, when it comes, they didn't really, they didn't really have any like solid, like this is one of the things we're gonna do, there's a lot of like, well, we could do this, and we couldn't do this. So it's it's, it is, you know, it's these, these companies are sort of, it's an additional revenue stream, because if you can give people additional features that they can subscribe to, and they can sort of turn on and turn off as they needed. And that's revenue that as we move TVs, I think they're going to start losing, especially when it comes to trucks, I mean, trucks are just money making machines, and at some point, you're not gonna be able to make a truck for like $5 and sell it for $25, which is essentially how the entire truck industry works like pickup trucks. And so with with that going away, they have to figure out other ways to start making money. And with GM there, they have ultrafire, which, you know, it's if you if there are features that you want to add to your vehicle later on, you can and if there are features, you know, if you don't want it to be part of any of this, you can just have the regular infotainment system that they have it's in Dino there, they announced it, they talked a little bit about things, they could be doing what they think they could do, but there's no real solid, what they're going to do with it other than it's going to sit on top of Linux, and it'll sit beside some vehicles that also have Andrew automotive Android automotive. So it's Yeah, it was very sort of hazy, it was sort of a hazy bit of, of information, but it shows that they are thinking about becoming a, you know, essentially looking at what Tesla has been doing and saying, Hey, why don't we do that? Because those people seem to enjoy that. Sam Abuelsamid 47:49 Yeah, you know, as you said, it's a, it's a platform that sits on top of Linux, and provide developers with API's that they can use to access basically any vehicle data, and create all kinds of different apps. That, you know, with potential revenue streams, you know, whether it might be one time purchase or subscriptions and, and, and also allowed GM to make apps like, like you talked about, you know, the potential for renting something renting a feature like supercruise you know, and we've heard, you know, but other automakers BMW has talked about that, you know, with their, their latest generation stuff, you know, they're they're looking at maybe providing subscriptions to various kinds of features like heated seats for example, you just subscribe to them though in the wintertime and then in the summertime, you don't need them. I think for you know, for the manufacturer, and I think having a platform like that is fine. It's it's gonna you know, it'll give them the potential for some new revenues, depending on how they price the stuff. It's I'm gonna be fascinated to see whether consumers are actually interested in paying a subscription fee for all these different features. That's the big unknown you know, nobody is quite figured out yet. You know, how how much real willingness is there for people you know, when they've got a car payment already? How much are they going to be willing to pay nickel and dime for all these other things that that they, you know, may want to use and that's I mean, that's a big unknown. Roberto Baldwin 49:40 It's tough because I mean, BMW got slammed over their their idea that you had to pay an extra 80 bucks or whatever, a year now to use CarPlay, which, you know, I can get CarPlay and a Hyundai for free. If I had a Hyundai. It's supported CarPlay boom, I just had CarPlay and BMW tried to set this thing up. Well, if you pay as $80 a year, you can use CarPlay in your car, and people lost their minds, and rightfully so. And so yeah, even at during the day, and again, this is all sort of hazy when they talked about, they didn't really specify any real features that are coming in, or subscription services that are coming. But one of the things they noticed like, Well, what about real time traffic, unlike what we get real time traffic for free right now, essentially. And it's, and if I can, if I have to pay for real time traffic, and three years, when this goes live, I can just plug in my phone and get real time traffic, you know, you're, if you're pushing people away, you have to be very careful with these systems, because you can push them away. And like we said, when we talked about, like, giving up that space, to, to, to, you know, Google and Apple, if you push people back to Google and Apple, that's, that's a bad scene, because you're putting all this research and development, and you have these developers who are building these apps. And if they're not compelling enough to pay $5, a month, $10 a month, $20, we don't know what the pricing will be, by the way. There. Yeah, Sam Abuelsamid 51:02 there's, there's a whole other issue as well, which is getting developers to actually build for the ultra phi platform. You know, if you look at the mobile phone market, you know, we have basically two operating systems today, two platforms, he got iOS and Android. Yeah, and there were there used to be others, you know, Nokia had their system, Blackberry had their platform, there was Windows, Microsoft, Windows Mobile. And all of those went away, in part, because they didn't have enough market share. And developers only have so much resources to support different platforms. And today, you know, there's no in most cases, they support both Android and an iOS. But in some cases, they they don't even bother supporting Android, they'll only do iOS, or only do Android. And for an automaker to try to put its own platform out there and say, Hey, come and build apps for our platform, that's completely incompatible with what Ford is doing. What Tesla's doing, like, Who's gonna do that, you know, especially when you look at the size of the market, you know, the automotive market, you know, it's in terms of unit volumes, it's quite a bit smaller than, than the, the phone market, you know, Apple alone, you know, Apple sells, you know, maybe three or 400 million iPhones every year. Very all the various Android vendors sell, you know, upwards of a billion or a billion and a half phones every year. And, you know, you sell, we sell about 90 million vehicles a year, globally. And then you split that up, you know, among a dozen or more different platforms to develop for, I can't I see, it's gonna be really tough for them to attract anybody. I mean, Ford tried to do this with their sync app link system, when they launched it over a decade ago, you know, said, here's some API's, you can have your apps connect to our car, and you can, you know, users can control the app, on your phone through, you know, through app link, and through our through the voice recognition. And, you know, you look today and there's maybe a dozen applink apps, you know, it's it's, I don't see it attracting a whole lot of attention from third parties, it's going to be really tough for GM or anybody else to do that. Because it's just going to be too fragmented. So Roberto Baldwin 53:36 they're gonna get Spotify and I Heart Radio. Those are the two they're gonna yet yeah, and that's gonna be because I I'm assuming they essentially at Spotify and Spotify and iHeartRadio do is build containers for a web page. That loads that's it. Yeah, I think they just build a container for web. Sam Abuelsamid 53:51 Yeah, that's what Pandora was doing for years. You know that Pandora is on every vehicle, you know, they did the same kind of thing. So okay. Another one of the news drops from from GM yesterday, was about bright drop, which is their new commercial vehicle, electric commercial vehicle business unit. Back in January, I think they announced bright drop announced their first product, the Evie 600, which is a big delivery van, big box van, like the big FedEx and UPS vans, etc. So this, this is a larger van than even the biggest Ford Transit. And they, they announced the other day that you know, they had only kicked off the whole bright drop program 20 months ago, you know, they decided to do this to build, you know, electric commercial vehicles under ultium. powertrain platform. And they developed and got this thing into production in just 20 months, which is pretty amazing. I mean, you know, compared to a typical consumer vehicle, it's a lot simpler. vehicle in a lot of ways so and they had already developed the powertrain and the batteries and everything. So they're basically using stuff from you know, that's going to be in the Hummer EV and various other vehicles. But they they've started low volume production of this thing. They're the towards the end of next year, they're gonna actually going to be building these things in higher volumes at their plant in Ingersoll Ontario that currently builds the Chevy Equinox, the equinox production there's going to end in April of next year, and then they're going to retool it for bright drop production. But until then, they're working with their supplier that's actually making most of the equipment that's going to go into Ingersoll at their facility here in Michigan and they're building low doing low volume production. The first 500 units of this are going to FedEx and they plan to start delivering these vehicles and in the coming weeks you know so that FedEx can start using these before the holiday delivery rush you know before they're delivering all the Christmas stuff and Black Friday stuff and so they don't know exactly how many FedEx is going to have in its fleet by the end of the year. But by early part of you know by probably the end of first quarter of next year, they should have 500 of these Evie six hundreds in the FedEx fleet and then they also announced the addition of a second model the Evie 410 which you know they have a very creative naming scheme Evie and then a number that represents the cubic feet cubic foot volume of the the cargo area. So the Evie 600 all 600 cubic feet of stuff, Evie, 410 410 cubic feet of stuff, Roberto Baldwin 56:46 that if you're a fleet if you're if you're a purchaser for a fleet management company, that's the best thing in the world. I think it's an electric vehicle and it's 600 cubic feet. Well how much is one half? Okay, yeah, that's cool. We can we can do that. Sam Abuelsamid 57:00 Yeah, depending on what the use cases Yeah, fleets, you know, buy different sizes of vans, depending on what they need, you know, the 14 is going to be pretty much the same size as long body high roof for transit. So you know, you'll see them, you know, plumbers and electricians and stuff using them. And, you know, the the bigger one is used by delivery companies, things like that. So that's, you know, I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more electric vans, driving around our neighborhoods delivering our our packages that we order online. You know, Amazon has already got several dozen of the rivian vans running in about, I think five cities now. They've got they started in LA earlier in the summer. They've got some here in the Detroit area now. And there's three other cities. And Amazon's ordered 100,000 of those for delivery by the end of the decade. So I think delivery delivery vans are going to start getting a lot quieter in the next year. So Roberto Baldwin 58:05 yeah, I talked to drop I talked to Travis the CEO by backdrop and the chief operating officer of FedEx a few months ago about what they were doing what was going on. And FedEx is had already been sort of testing them and they were talking about most interesting is like you said, like the scale the ability to scale, because they are part of GM is a huge, huge reason why companies like FedEx are interested in bright drop, because if you have, you know, some sort of small Evie, startup, if that startup collapses, yeah, if that start collapsing, like workhorse or just like dozens of other ones, but if you're Yeah, workhorse, and you you buy these and then they just sort of disappear, the company disappears. What do you do? How do you get these fixed? Whereas GM has you know, there's you know, there's there's factories and service centers and people who can sell them and service them and whatever and you know, you can do all these things, because you're associated with GM. And so for the big company, like FedEx, and whoever else is looking into buying these things, that that is a big, big selling point for them. And I think, you know, have been able to ale the scale quickly, because they're, they're associated with GM, it's, it's, it's, you can sit there and say, Well, you know, these cool startups are doing this thing, but they don't have the resources that GM has. And those resources mean a lot to these people who are buying, you know, even if you're buying 10 if you buy 10 of these, and your company collapses your screw your FedEx, and you're buying, you know, hundreds of 1000s of these and you're like, Oh, so yeah, what? Sam Abuelsamid 59:43 Like, yeah, that's why, you know, I mean, rivian you know, they got lucky that Amazon decided, yeah, okay, we're going to use you guys, you know, and that, that basically put rivian on the map and said, Okay, we've got at least 100,000 committed sales. You know, You know, that's that's a big help to accompany. But you know, and that's why you know Ford and GM and still ANSYS because the lattice is also launching next year, an electric version around 2023, an electric version of the promaster van that they already sell that in Europe as the Viet Ducato, the Ducato. So there's gonna be electric promaster and Ford is launching the E transit this fall. So, you know, they're all three of them, you know, are they're leveraging that same kind of attitude that customers have, you know, they're, they, they're, their customers gonna be more willing to buy from a known quantity, you know, that, that they're already buying vans from? So, you know, they already know how these things work, you know, they've already got a relationship with the, the fleet sales guys, and you know, what the dealers, you know, for maintenance and everything. It's, I think, you know, those three companies in particular, and also Mercedes, and then, you know, the Caribbean is like, the one newcomer that I think has a solid chance of succeeding. You know, Mercedes is also bringing an electric version of the Sprinter van. And, you know, those four companies, though, right now, they dominate that, that market for those kinds of ants. And it's, you know, I think they will, they will largely continue to with the addition of rivian in there as well. Yeah, Roberto Baldwin 1:01:21 I think Yeah. reviens the sort of the odd man out in that that situation, but they, yeah, that that Amazon deal. That's, that's game changing for them. Sam Abuelsamid 1:01:31 Yeah. Speaking of Ford, did you hear their news yesterday, Roberto Baldwin 1:01:37 they're spending a lot of money on TVs. Sam Abuelsamid 1:01:41 Yeah. Between Ford and SK. Love $1.4 billion dollars to build two new campuses dedicated to ramping up PVS. ones in Kentucky. But 50 miles south of Louisville reformed already has two big assembly plants that build super duties and full size SUVs. And they Ford Escape and Lincoln course there. And then the other one is in Tennessee. So in Kentucky, they're building they are back earlier this summer, they announced they're doing a joint venture with SK called Blue oval SK to build batteries. And they're building to battery plants in Kentucky. And then in Tennessee, they're building this massive complex that they're calling blue oval city, that includes two more battery plants. Plus, Ford's first all new Greenfield assembly plant since 1969. The last time they opened a brand new plant on a new location was the Kentucky truck plant. And in Louisville. That was that opened in 1969. And they're building a new electric truck plant in Tennessee, near Memphis. And they're going to be expanding f electric Esther is production down there. And what's interesting is I was on a call with Lisa Drake, the CEO the other day. And you know, they're not talking specifically what products they're going to build there other than to say f series. And this is the first time that they're not just saying f 150 you know with with the the plant in Dearborn where they're building the lightning starting next spring, you know, that is specifically an F 150 plant. This new plant in Tennessee is an F series plant, which implies that they're going to be building f 150s and super duties there and potentially other form factors as well. And between those two, they're planning about 11,000 new jobs. g Ford is putting in 7 billion of that investment. With the other four and a half billion coming from SK and this afternoon, there was a story that came out in the detroit news calling Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer saying that you know they Michigan never even really got a chance to compete to bid on getting either of these facilities. Which is interesting. Yeah. Because when when you look at what's happening with the Evie production, you know, they're trying to localize more and more of it, and especially getting battery plants, you know, relatively close proximity to assembly plants. And it would have it seems it would seem like it would have made more sense for Ford, you know, to not put a plant in Tennessee because right now they don't have any production in the southeast. But they're they're doing that and you know, Ford put out a statement basically saying that, you know, these these two sites in Kentucky Tennessee, you know, had the amount of space that they needed and other facilities and they were ready to go, you know, they're shovel ready, ready to start construction right away. And they said they stated that, you know, there was nothing available in Michigan that met their needs. And I think that that's only part of the story. I think that there's there's another piece to this, which is politics. Because if you look at the way the defense contractors work, and space contractors for NASA, when when you have big expensive projects that that run way over budget and way over way past schedule, like the Space Launch System, or the F 35. fighter, a lot of people complain, well, why don't we just kill these projects? Well, part of the reason why members of Congress don't vote to kill these projects, is because the the contractors have learned a very important lesson over the years, when there's jobs in a representative or senators district, that would be lost, if they voted to kill a project, they are much less likely to vote to kill that project. So if you look at their jobs, if you look at something like the F 35, they Lockheed Martin has hundreds of subcontractors, they literally have production of at least some component of the F 35. In almost all 535 congressional districts in the United States, I think it's over 500 of them have some part of the F 35 that's being built there. Same thing is true for the Space Launch System. There's pieces of that being built all over the country, which is why Congress never votes to kill those things. My guess is that Ford is doing something similar with with third decision where to put these plants because, you know, if they're making all this investment in building E, V's and building batteries, and same is true for other automakers, and they want to make sure that there's actually consumer demand for these vehicles when they're out when they get out there. And so when to do part of doing that is getting the incentives getting the tax incentives for sales of the vehicles getting incentives for building charging infrastructure. And, you know, to do you know, the the representatives that are most likely to vote against something like that are in places like oh, Tennessee, Kentucky, and other southern states. And so if you spend all this money in their states, and employ a whole bunch of people, you know, in their districts, they're going to be a lot less likely to vote against those things. And so I'm thinking that that was a big part of the Ford's calculus and why they chose to put those plants where they did. Roberto Baldwin 1:07:55 I mean, that's really smart because if you did really, I mean a lot of Congress just wants to keep their job, that's all there is to it. They just want to keep their job they want to be voted in and if Ford puts a giant factory in Tennessee, and they're employing like, you know 1000s of people in the state and the you know, the condition you know, that either state or national politicians in that area are voting against essentially their constituents his employment by like voting against like infrastructure systems and and Evie rebates and or tax credits or whatever, then that's going to be bad for them. So when you have when you have your constituents saying, Hey, I work at this, this car, plan this truck plan or whatever, and we're making electric cars, you need to make sure that electric cars are going to be on the road, you need to make sure that when I when we have electric cars that you can drive them everywhere and all this stuff, so you can Yeah, if you sort of diversify and like you said, like Lockheed just sort of throw your stuff into everything so that if anyone votes against you, you're like, look what you're doing your people and you're you know and you're this debate Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's tricky and it's unfortunate that's that's how companies have to do because I mean, the F 35 is a piece of trash but but you know if forge makes a good product I Sam Abuelsamid 1:09:17 said about the SLS too Roberto Baldwin 1:09:22 but if you you know, if you're building a good product and you need you know, that's I'm fine with if you're building a good product, you're building trash, and you're just kind of holding it over people and that's going to be an issue we'll have to deal with, I guess in five this year. Sam Abuelsamid 1:09:35 Yeah, but I'm guessing that you know, as GM announces the location of more of its battery plants as to lantis does the same and other manufacturers do the same. We may see a similar strategy of putting them in states where, you know, they're they need some help to convince senators or Congress critters to vote for these, these incentives Roberto Baldwin 1:09:57 in the the the fossil industry restates Sam Abuelsamid 1:10:01 Yeah, exactly. Alright, lucid, officially started production of the air yesterday. And they they'll start delivering those sometime later in October to customers. That's all we know at the moment. None of us have driven it yet. Let's, let's dive into a couple of listener emails before we wrap it up for the evening. First one is from Mark Shakespeare, and it's kind of a long one here. This Many thanks for continuing to provide informative and always entertaining podcast love Nicole's Boston driving insights since for my first few years in the US I lived in Massachusetts and realized that the state driving motto was attack the space a required skill when driving towards and into Boston. Not sure how it will play out when Boston drivers all have torque monster, Evie so that my my VW GTI Mark seven sport is now four years old one year outside of warranty. According to the armchair experts in the social media forums for the last year, I've been living on borrowed time and I need to switch out my car my my check engine light bulb, if it is not coming on every time I start the car. Stop joking aside, this is my third GTI it's a great car and does everything really really well. That said, I think it's time to go back to rear wheel drive Miss mild FRS for the next car. I really would like an Alfa Giulia ti with the sport suspension, but the nearest alpha dealers are five plus hours drive. I called our local polantis dealership that does Dodge, Jeep, FIA, etc, but not alpha, and they said they cannot do warranty work on an alpha. I understand that a dealer would need the service team members with alpha training access to alpha diagnostic software and the dealer would need to carry some parts and also have access to the parts. All it said could a large company likes to Lantus was so many brands be legally able to allow franchise dealers to provide warranty work on a brand alpha male even if the dealer was not in an authorized an authorized seller, the brand seems like a great way to sell more cars. experts on the social media forums would say that alphas are not reliable and indeed some publications would agree I do not have enough alpha experience to say one way or the other but having access to a dealer who can do warranty service work seems like the common sense note only seems like common sense no matter what the brand. So as far as the alpha reliability goes, I think there were some problems early on when they launched the Giulia as far as I know most of those have been sorted out and they're they're generally pretty good right now talking to our former coaster Becca she drives an alpha style Leo and hasn't had any issues with it. So I wouldn't necessarily be too concerned about the reliability if you were to buy one now but servicing What do you think Roberto Baldwin 1:12:53 that's tough because I think alpha is a bit like Volkswagen right now. I think you know, the Volkswagen thing like like he says like if he's checking in bold isn't coming on and must be burnt out you know, most likely you're gonna you're either gonna get like an amazing car that lasts for 500 years or you might get something that's not so great I think that's where alpha is right i think that's we're still anthesis as a whole I think there were years and years where you could get a Fiat or a Dodge or whatever or Chrysler and you just knew it was something weird was going to happen with it I think their their their quality has gone up but you still have those sort of weird you know one offs issues and I think when the Alfa when the the the data can remember the name what's what's the Julia when the Julia first came out there were a lot of cars that came out that a lot of issues and I think that's and of course everyone just pointed right well, it's an alpha, but having said that, you know, two or three years down the road the manufacturers have essentially gotten better and also the Julia is an outstanding vehicle. It is so great to drive is so wonderful I love the Julia but not having a service center within what five hours that's five hour sets tough. That's tough because what happens if something goes wrong and you who you send your Giulia to and that's that's that's that's that is a huge bummer. Especially for such a great car that you know, it's it's Alfa Romeo, they're sort of slowly been introduced back into the United States. But that also means that they've been slow. You know, you have to get dealers and speeding up the MNL dealer network. Yeah, it's been speeding up and having a dealer support. You know, an automaker that may or may not be around in 10 years is really tough, especially if you're not in a large metropolitan area. If you're in like LA or New York, San Francisco, Houston, whatever, you're probably better off because they're like, well, we can we can We can afford because there's going to be a lot more people and more people will be interested in this vehicle whereas if you're like saying Fresno or Cleveland it might be a bit tougher where you're like well we're gonna sell one or two of these is it really worth it to have all this staff trained to work on the one or two when they do break down so it's got I want to tell them this eight I want to tell them to buy the Julia because every time someone buys a Julia an angel gets its wings but this Yeah, five hours that is Sam Abuelsamid 1:15:28 Yeah, you know, as far as the other still at is dealers not servicing alphas. You know, I think it basically comes down to the fact that the Stelvio and the Giulia are basically unique among the current everything that still add to cells in North America right now they don't really share any components or systems with other still lantis brands you know, you know across Jeep and dodge and Chrysler and and RAM You know, there's a lot of shared stuff and most of the most of the dealers sell multiple brands anyway so to to ask those dealers you know to service alphas if they're not selling them you know is you know, it's hard to make the case to you know, you can't really force them to make that investment if they're not selling that brand and the parts and the training and everything else so I can I can see why why they don't service alphas if they're not selling it there are alternatives i mean i agree with with you Robbie that you know the Julia's have fabulous car to drive. But you know, if you want to go rear drive there's there's other solutions. Yeah. Take a look at the Genesis g 70. The Kia stinger. He has another nice one. Yeah, there's always you know, BMW Roberto Baldwin 1:17:03 there's the br z which is but I think he is Yeah, like he's looking for something a little bit classier than the mark than the you know. Yeah, yeah. The G 70. Yeah, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:17:16 Yeah, g 70 or the stinger i think you know, take a look at those and you know, at least particularly for the stinger you know, you can find Kia dealers almost everywhere. Not quite so much for the Genesis, but they probably still find something relative really close to where you are, I would think so. Take a look at those as alternatives. Alright, next one is from Ron. My 2014 Nissan Murano transmission died again at 193,000 miles and I don't want to put any more money into it. I drive them till they die. Do I get a foreigner or tell you right? I know the Kia has more fluff. I'm just looking for long term reliability. What do you think? For runar telluride is a replacement for the Murano Roberto Baldwin 1:18:01 so yeah the the telluride is going to be a lot more comfortable to drive it's going to be like you said more fluff it's going to be a nicer driving experience here your family might like you a little bit more if you get the telluride just because it's a wonderful car and I think you know Kia and Hyundai the whole Hyundai Motor Group has really brought it when it comes to reliability in the last you know 510 years they finally you know, the the sort of shaken off that sort of the horribleness that they that they used to be and become this like very solid automaker. That's it if you are planning on doing anything off roadie, you hit the four runner of course the first one is gonna drive more like a truck. So you're you're trading you're trading you know the unibody for body on frame and that's you know, and when you do that it's gonna grab like a truck. But I love to talk about the the why I love to talk about the the the Top Gear episode, where you have a Toyota helix which is essentially the Tacoma and they drop it off a building, they do all these insane things, they drive it into the ocean, and the car just killed the truck just keeps going and that that's what you're going to get from to you if you need a vehicle that eventually you want to see on the on on TV being driven around by freedom fighters or terrorists or whatever in the desert. It's going to be the theater for that. They just you cannot kill a truck. That's what I've learned. Sam Abuelsamid 1:19:35 Yeah, you will probably have no problem at all matching that down nearly 200,000 miles with the foreigner and then doubling or tripling that. If as long as you maintain it. Yeah, given that, you know, you put 200,000 miles on a 2014 Murano. I'm assuming that Ron doesn't do a whole lot of off roading. So I'm not sure if he's looking For a change of lifestyle in addition to a change in vehicle so if you are in Iran if you are looking to go off roading you know then then definitely you know at least take the foreigner for a good long test drive assuming you can find one. Before you before you sign on the dotted line you know make sure you take taking take the heart but what Robbie just said about you know the ride quality and make sure that that's something you can live with for 234 100,000 miles and if it is then go for it. You know if you want something that's more akin to the way the Murano felt that will probably last at least as long as the Murano did and and have more room in it than the Murano then you know the key is probably your best choice. Unknown Speaker 1:20:49 Yeah, yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:20:52 All right. And finally from Michael burns, who think we answered a question in his last time as well. It says Episode 212 really nicely dovetailed into 211 regarding the Volvo and the Pollstar V's thanks for taking my questions about the XC 40 recharge and Evie pricing and tax credits regarding Nicole's feedback on the pole star is the XC 40 recharge basically a lifted pole star to all wheel drive model with vulva livery and sounds and looks like nearly the exact same car. pole star places are scattered around the US the closest to Atlanta is Charlotte. Are these separate Toyota like franchises are Tesla like franchises. I everyone pays the same price for the car, or are these just Pollstar dealers where haggling is going to come into play? So let's let's address that first. That's just those first two questions. Roberto Baldwin 1:21:43 It is you know it's the same it's sort of the same, it's just a lifted pole star to I think there's a there's a little bit of tuning when it comes to how they handle I just finished a review for wired for the XC 40 recharge. And every time I drive that car I forget how fast that thing is is over 400 is 400 in like two or eight or somewhere between 404 110 horsepower and it is just like you stomp on the gas and it slams your passengers heads into the headrest. It is ridiculous that how quick how quick that that vehicle is if you're concerned about the Pollstar places if you rather you know the Volvo dealership network is obviously a bit more robust the you know the XC 40 recharges is it's it's it's a nice sub compact SUV. The efficiency level isn't as high as some other automakers you're only getting 220 something miles of range but you get 150 kilowatt DC fast charging, so charged a little bit quicker than other cars in that in that area. But it is yeah, both of them are Yeah, again, they're sort of the same car but the same one, right? Yeah, they're the same. There's Yeah, they're kind of the same. They're the same platform. Yeah, it's right drive them both. See what you what you which one do you like better if you need to just scooch more room. To me, the XC 40 might be what you're going for if you want a little bit more sportiness than the Pollstar to be there your jam, Sam Abuelsamid 1:23:17 and the Pollstar is also got a much bigger tutton center touchscreen than a xc 40 does. Even though they both use the new, the new Android automotive infotainment system, you get a bigger screen and the pole star and the pole star franchise or the full star dealers the places as they call them, there are still relatively few they're adding more and more all the time. But it is more like Tesla there's you know, they're they're not factory owned. I think they are franchises, but there's no haggling on the price of the car. So it's it's pretty straightforward. And honestly, right now, doesn't matter what wherever you go, you're not gonna be doing much haggling on the price of the car, whatever, they whatever, they've got an inventory. They're gonna you're gonna pay that much, Roberto Baldwin 1:24:02 especially for us cars Sam Abuelsamid 1:24:04 right now at least. Yeah. So continuing along regarding Robbie's experience with the Kona. Evie, did you find yourself having to pay a premium with current ship and or inventory shortages? And have you have any Have you noticed disclaimers on custom car orders about parts that may have to be installed later because of chip shortages, the Pollstar to website for example, list parts features that have to be installed at a later date due to semiconductor availability. So did you have any of those kind of issues with the Kona Roberto Baldwin 1:24:35 so so I think, and I'm gonna say that this is probably one of the perks of my job is that when we came in, my wife told them what I do for a living, which is I write about cars and I review cars and I know a lot about cars and I've driven this car before and she had never driven the car before because when you get a car in a lab, like usually when a person is allowed to drive it, that's how that's how it works. I can't just give it to like my my wife. presenter whoever and so I think it made them a little bit nervous and there was a markup on the vehicle but they removed it because I said I'm like well and as they're breaking it down I'm like well there was a markup on the vehicle I don't want to pay that market but I go No no no we've removed that so I you can you can push them to remove it I know people who have had they're having issues but they're they're Broncos I think that's you know the there's you know, there's tons of stories of people out there who were you know, they order a bronco and then the dealerships put a $10,000 premium on that a bronco they ordered last year or more and they're adding these premiums these people right before they get their cars which is just it's just a horrible move it's it's it's it's a great way to make people not want to go back to your dealership is what it is. I didn't have that issue. I think they're, you know, they were very nice. And they were very accommodating and I made sure but you know, you have to sort of make sure especially when it comes to buying these big you know, you see that price say, I'm not paying this and be beef, be beef, be happy with walking away. I think that's one of the things that I've, if you if you fall in love with a car, they know what they because they deal with people who are looking at cars all the time. If you fall in love with a car, and they see it, they're just they're just gonna be like, well, we can't do anything about it. But if you're happy to walk away especially towards the end of the month when they have quotas they have to deal with they'll they'll you can you can get them to budge at least a little bit. I am not a fan of the dealer markup. I think it's sort of a jerk move. When when an automaker says, Oh, this car starts at this much. And then you go to the store and like no, no, we're charging more. It's like if you went to Target to buy, you know, a video game and the video game maker says at $60 you go to Target target like well everyone wants his video game so we're gonna charge you $80 Sam Abuelsamid 1:26:55 you know, it's kind of the flip side, the you know, the price on the sticker. There's a reason why it says manufacturer's suggested retail price. This is the price that the automaker says you should probably sell it for. But you know, franchise dealers are independent businesses, they can literally sell it for any price that they want. You know, if they want to sell it at a loss they can do that. You know and the flip side of being able to haggle and get the price down by five or more $1,000 is that sometimes when there's something really popular there might be more than the sticker price and that's that's just the way it is and like you said you know, you got to be prepared you know if if they're charging too much just walk away, you know, just let them know that I'm not I'm not gonna pay that and then just walk walk out the door and you know, depending on on how popular the vehicle is, I mean unfortunately you know in in cases like the bronco where it's very popular you know they can get away with stuff like that on those kinds of vehicles because they know that if you walk away somebody else is going to walk in just 10 minutes from now and they're gonna be willing to pay it and that's that's and that's that's why they can do it you know and it's it's basic supply and demand when there's limited supply and a lot of demand the price goes up and when it's the inverse price goes down Roberto Baldwin 1:28:16 I don't think there's a huge demand for the Kona Evie they just all it did was a refresh they made a little bit cheaper it's not the bronco I don't think I could have walked in and said I know some friends who've been able to knock like half like off you know it's been paying 10,000 they're only gonna pay 5000 which still feels like but you know they're able to knock that that that that some at least some of that that dealer markup off if you really want a car and it's in high demand here especially now it's good luck it's tough time to buy a car and now Sam Abuelsamid 1:28:52 as far as features that Dell carmakers are saying you know, when we have the parts you know bring it back and we'll install it most automakers are not doing that you know they're either just shipping it with without certain features or they're not shipping the vehicle at all in some cases. You know one example of shipping without certain features story came out today that GM is suspending installations of supercruise on the escalate and delaying the launch of supercruise on some other models like the expanding on to the CT four and CT five beyond the Wii models because there they just don't have chips and they'll they'll start putting it back on later when they when they have the right parts. So it's it's kind of a mix you know depends on the feature and which automaker, it is. And then for your enjoyment Robbie, since you mentioned gray cow greyhounds at the end of the show before the toilet a guest you can fit to greyhounds side by side in a quad cab Ram 1500 So there's that, Roberto Baldwin 1:30:01 boom, there you go. We I have I have a gentleman's I have a big German shepherd and then a little German Shepherd, and that is our number. When we bought a Kona, we had to make sure like well how are they going to fit in here Mike? Well, if I leave the seat up, they have more headroom. And it's no different than we're driving them around in our in our x type or Jaguar, 2004 Jaguar x type, so they have essentially the same amount of headroom. But I will say that we went on a trip earlier this week and whenever we go on a long drive more than like a couple hours, we rent a minivan which is typically a Chrysler Pacifica or Voyager or Dodge Grand Caravan. One of those is essentially what you get when you when you rent a minivan and we just put them in the back of that for long drives but yeah, if you can get dog yeah getting two great hands on a 1500 boom, boom, you're happier dogs are happy, the dog you're happy, and you got a lot of torque, I guess. Sam Abuelsamid 1:30:55 And I just I just checked Twitter and there's also a couple of questions there. First one from Patrick Frawley wishes and expectations for the new Integra Oh man. I don't want I want I want that to be all the Civic Type our powertrain in it. Roberto Baldwin 1:31:15 Oh, yeah. Transmission, that that transmission and everything. Yeah, that whole that that is what? And the suspension? Everything we did with the tie bar is magic. The wizards I don't know what like what sort of black magic they used over at the Honda engineers. But yeah, if they can take that and put it into the Integra. That's it make it all super handling all wheel drive, though? I'm happy, perfect. Put in my pocket. Sam Abuelsamid 1:31:43 Okay. And then last one from car snob, spelled with two A's instead of an O. How would you electrify the future Miata and maintain its identity? So, as a Miata owner, this, this is going to be an interesting one to watch. On the next episode, Nicole and I will be discussing the Mazda MX 30, which we both drive drove this week. And we can't share our thoughts on that just yet. But I have I have good feelings about what Mazda might be able to do with an electric Miata. And, you know, I think if they can manage to keep the weight down, then I think it could actually be really, really, really good. And I will leave it at that. Roberto Baldwin 1:32:43 I didn't drive the MX 30. So I can say whatever the hell I want. I think if Miata can get a battery chemistry that gives you 200 miles out of this, say 50 kilowatt hour pack or smaller, that's going to reduce the weight. And that's going to allow you to keep the the sort of the nimbleness of a Miata with an Eevee power train and I it, maybe a few, I mean, I think that's going to be a few years from now, just because I feel like masa is a little bit behind and they're teaming up with who they seem to Toyota. For their back. Yes. Yeah. So that Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 1:33:26 On a lot of their electrification stuff, although, yeah, stuff they did themselves. They did that internally. And I think that they're going to be using a lot of Toyota's stuff going forward on the next generation. ie V's But yeah, I think, you know, if they can do you know, they can squeeze a 50 kilowatt hour battery, like, you know, down the center tunnel, you know, maybe do something like a T shaped pack, like they had in the vault. Oh, yeah. But in reverse, so you have the the top of the tee at the front where the engine is today, and then down the center tunnel, so instead of, instead of being completely under the floor, you know, that way you keep that low seating position on either side of the tunnel. I think you could, you could probably get 50 kilowatt hours into that space. And, and be and, you know, really, you know, most It's not often that you're going to take really long road trips, and something like a Miata anyway. So if you got 200 miles of range, even 175 miles of range in a Miata, you know, and then the electric motor at the rear axle. I think that could actually work really well. And I would I actually have kind of high hopes for it. Roberto Baldwin 1:34:44 If they can, if they can give me another inch of room to sit in it, or the headroom a little bit more headroom. I would I would definitely a 200 200 mile Miata electric me out. I would just throw money at him. All I want is an Eevee. verbal and I would love it to be a Miata and I would love to because Mazda how they're going to do IE V's I think I haven't again I haven't driven the MX 30 is they're going to continue to have that sort of driver first mentality when it comes to tuning and suspension and cornering and all the things that you expect from a Mazda all the wonderful things you expect from us I feel like they're there. They're late TVs but the Eevee the Eevee world is an array isn't a sprint it's a marathon so they can be a few years late yeah Toyota can be a few years later Honda can be a few years late Mazda can be a few essentially Japan can be a few years late and still be fine because it's not like they're losing money by doing it Sam Abuelsamid 1:35:40 I just I just looked at the numbers today you know so far this year, ie these represent two and a half percent of vehicle sales in the US so there's still a long way to go and there's there's still room for everybody Roberto Baldwin 1:35:53 which is growth so it's mean more and more people are buying TVs but it's you know, it's two and a half percent. People are still buying a lot of car V's and cx fives and whatnot. So it's you know, I have thoughts about the MX 30 and it's like sort of disappointing range in my in my view, but you know, you got to start somewhere and they're starting again, they're starting a little late so they're starting there with that and we'll it'll I I'm very excited about what everyone who drove that car when it comes to everything else about it, how they feel and hopefully, it's it's a it's a, you know, it's a Mazda and hopefully, they're able to continue that when they when they go full bore into EBS. And yes, an MX five v v would be outstanding. Sam Abuelsamid 1:36:44 fingers on with that. We'll call it a shelf and we'll see you next time. Bye.